Of Donkeys and Robots

So I'm reading ANCIENT JEWISH MAGIC and Gideon Bohak, the author, is telling of an "erotic spell" in which a charm is written on a piece of tin, to which he adds the parenthetical statement "it's a tin line between love and hate!" Let me explain. This is nothing like the Gideon Bohak I know. Well, there is a footnote in which he makes a fond, gently humorous allusion to his hometown. But the violent whimsy of "it's a tin line between love and hate!" is present nowhere else in this academic... some might say dry as burnt toast... work. Well! Gideon Bohak does favor a jaunty exclamation point in his parenthetical statements (as seen in the example already given), which might count as whimsy if you are a scholar of ancient esoterica. Before I continue exploring this thought, I want to say that I wonder what Gideon Bohak's editor thought of "it's a tin line between love and hate!" Did Gideon Bohak have to fight for it? I am developing an enhanced sense of respect for Gideon Bohak. Anyway, so, yes! In the very next paragraph we have an example of Bohak's penchant for parenthetical exclamation points. He has moved on to a spell which requires the magician (or is it the client?) to "take meat of a donkey in your mouth." I'm sorry I told you that. But I had to! Because Gideon Bohak presently adds the parenthetical statement that putting donkey meat in your mouth is "not very kosher!" Exclamation point his, I reemphasize. He goes on to examine cultural depictions of donkeys as "stupid, stubborn, and lazy," which reminded me, by way of contrast, of the other book I am reading right now, THE ILIAD, in which mules have been put forth more than once as some of the greatest animals you'd ever want to meet. They're always plowing fields faster than an ox, or pulling a big tree trunk down the side of a mountain. Those are the two things I can remember mules (in both cases, metaphorical mules) doing in THE ILIAD. Which brings me to another subject! Last night in bed, as I read THE ILIAD and Dr. Theresa worked a crossword puzzle, I suddenly shouted, "Hey! There are robots in this book!" Let's let that hang in the air for a while. Because I also want to say that I ran into Kelly Kornegay in Jackson, Mississippi, a couple of weeks ago, at the 50th anniversary party for Lemuria Books, which I didn't even tell you about, because why should you know every single thing that goes on in my life? Anyway, Kelly and I were talking about THE ILIAD, and she mentioned living in a new place where she can look out the window and see a donkey, and I got to tell her about the heroic mules of THE ILIAD. Pretty soon it got dark and Ace Atkins and I were standing in front of a stage watching 92-year-old bluesman Bobby Rush, of whom I took a photo with my very own phone and perhaps I will "post" it below. Also, there was a guy dressed as a cowboy who did some of the greatest dancing I've ever seen. He was up there all by himself dancing in his cowboy suit while opening acts played, and finally I thought, I should go dance with this guy! Let's get this party started! And Ace took a video of it, which I texted to Dr. Theresa (who had stayed home) so she could see my moves, and she immediately texted back "Have you been drinking?" And that's an interesting question but I bet you want to get back to the robots I read about in THE ILIAD last night. "They were made all of gold, but looked like living women." So you know I immediately thought of the DC comics characters the Metal Men, just as Homer intended. Furthermore, I checked Emily Wilson's endnote, and she calls them "robot women," so I'm not just coming to crazy conclusions. In fact, I think somebody installed A.I., because "They had a consciousness inside their hearts." And as I was lying there marveling about the golden robot women with consciousness in their hearts, I remembered thinking that I had noticed robots in the RAMAYANA as well. And I didn't just lie there and think about it for a change. I hauled my sorry carcass out of bed and went upstairs and found the RAMAYANA and refreshed my memory about these hydraulically powered automatons: "mechanical men, silently driven by falling water in some hidden way." And much like them, I am now running out of steam.

Crying Horses

Last night in THE ILIAD, these horses started crying. These were some upset horses, I tell you! "Hot tears flowed from their weeping eyelids to the earth." And such. I thought "Surely Emily Wilson will give us a footnote - or an endnote, to be precise! - about these weeping horses." But why did I want to be precise in the middle of that sentence? That's the real question. Precision is always a mistake. Anyway, I did check and she provides a note about how the horses' heads are bending so low in grief that their glorious manes get dirty dragging the ground, but nothing about their red hot tears of woe. Now, bear in mind, these are magic, immortal horses, so they have different standards than the common horse you rode to work today. I'm kind of slow with THE ILIAD because I get in bed at night and everyone immediately starts stabbing each other. In the book, I mean. I'm like, "Wow, these guys never stop stabbing. They love it!" And pretty soon I'd rather be asleep. Poor me! I'm as sad as a horse sometimes.

The Hoary Story

You know, whenever I think about the word "hoary," which I do several times a day, as we all do, I think of it in pejorative terms... in the sense, though they do not use the word "hoary," you will find in THE HUDSUCKER PROXY, when its characters quote what is, ironically (?), a hoary chestnut: "That gag's got whiskers on it." This, to me, these whiskers, these regrettable whiskers, this, they, they bespeak hoariness. If I were in a middle school essay contest about "What Hoariness Means to Me," I would quote, "That gag's got whiskers on it." BUT! All right, I'm reading ANCIENT JEWISH MAGIC by Gideon Bohak, and Professor Bohak has used "hoary" twice so far, at least twice that I've noticed, and both times, he seems to mean it in a nice way! So maybe I have "hoary" all wrong, like everything else. Okay, so the other thing is, I'm reading in ANCIENT JEWISH MAGIC about a certain root that will kill you if you pluck it out of the ground, due to its magical powers, so what you do is, well, you trick an innocent dog into doing your deadly dirty work for you. I don't like that. I don't like it one bit! But as I was reading it, I thought, "Hey! I already know about this magic root!" And the footnote informed me that the anecdote was extracted from a book by Josephus I have already read. It just goes to show you the benefit of reading mostly ancient things for a long time: pretty soon, you will be reading the same stuff over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over because you have sucked out all the juices of antiquity, leaving nothing but the bone-dry husk. So that's something. In conclusion, I would like to emphasize for a second time that I am not in the manosphere (I read somewhere that the manosphere loves to contemplate ancient times with ugly little smiles on their stupid faces).

It Bleeped

Reading Tacitus, I get to a part where this guy dreams there's gold buried under his field. So he runs up to Nero like Chicken Little and says "There's gold in my field!" You can see where this is going. There's no gold. And Nero... well, you know how Nero is. Anyway! So! The translator, A.J. Woodman, is crazy in love with footnotes. There's hardly a page without multiple footnotes at the bottom... or "foot." And are his footnotes dry? I don't know. Is the Sahara dry? I'm assuming the answer is yes, although I can easily imagine a big smart nerd who would tell me otherwise. Anyway, A.J. Woodman's footnotes are so dry they make the Sahara look like the grotto at the Playboy Mansion, as Dennis Miller would put it, causing us all to throw up. But in this singular case, A.J. Woodman's footnote is... whimsical? I don't know what it is. Here, I'll quote it: "'Dream guided treasure hunter to Roman coins' (headline in The Times [London], 11 December 1998)." So that footnote gives us nothing, really. That's not like A.J. Woodman! And really, the Roman coins found in 1998 could not be more different than the gold dreamed of by Caesellius Bassus, which was "not in the form of money but in a raw and ancient mass." (Also, unlike the Roman coins found in 1998, it didn't exist.) I guess A.J. Woodman just thought it was a fun story. It's still a mystery, if so, why he suddenly and very uncharacteristically wanted to be "fun." And certainly it would be going too far to postulate that he put forth the headline from the Times of London as a counternarrative... as if to say, "Hey, sometimes a dream CAN lead you to buried gold! Never give up, kids!" I couldn't find the article (I didn't try too hard), but I found the same story reported in the Irish Independent a full day before the Times of London picked it up. Here's a paragraph: "'In my dream I could see myself in the middle of the field pulling up a haul of coins,' Mr Roberts (46), a plumber, told a treasure trove inquest in Newport, south Wales, yesterday. 'When I had the same dream again a few nights later I took a few hours off and went to the field. I took just two paces and my metal detector bleeped.'" A treasure trove inquest! I didn't know about those. You know what this puts me in mind of? The other day, McNeil told me he had dreamed of salmon patties. And that was weird, because the day before - that is, the day leading to the night of McNeil's dream - I had been thinking about salmon patties! AND... later that night (the night AFTER McNeil's dream), Dr. Theresa - having been privy to neither my salmon patty thoughts nor McNeil's salmon patty dreams - suddenly announced, "I'd like to make salmon patties!"

I Gave Up

I thought I should tell you I stopped reading that giant hardcover "omnibus" of comics I mentioned yesterday. Why? Why did I give it up, I mean, not why did I think I should tell you. I don't have an answer for that one. Maybe because I'm unemployed and don't have anything else to do? As to the former question, however, it's not because I had shamed myself by mentioning it. It's because this "omnibus" is no damn good! The comics are too goofy. Yes, yes, I know I have often boasted perversely of loving the uncool, goofy comic book characters (not to be confused with the Disney character Goofy) the best... your Captain Marvel (the version often called "Shazam" by dimwits, for reasons I could get into here if I felt like it), your Metal Men, your Plastic Man, and so forth. But this glossy pile of junk I was reading was goofy in the wrong way. The goofiness it poured forth seemed born of bitterness and irony. The bitterness and irony of persons who have placed themselves high above goofiness. That's 1989 for you! There's a reason I originally stopped reading comic books when the price went up to 30 cents. Well, the reason was it became too expensive. Thirty cents is a lot of money! But the point is that the goofiness I like, the goofiness of your Plastic Man, your Metal Men, your Captain Marvel, is sincere and joyful... an embracing mechanism, not a distancing one. Anyway, I'd put this volume in the big overflowing garbage box of books they have for urchins to pick through in the park, but it's too damn big.

McNeil Absolved of Blasphemy

1. We drove down to visit my parents. We got a rental car with some of that sweet, sweet satellite radio we have learned to enjoy. So I turn it on and here comes "American Pie," Dr. Theresa's least favorite song. When he sang "Drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry," Dr. Theresa said, "Drive it in! You can't drive it fast enough for me!" Ouch! Later, I was thinking, hey, shouldn't a levee be dry anyway? Isn't it supposed to keep the water out? I cannot vouch for the accuracy of my idle musing. So, anyway, changing the selection before Dr. Theresa could explode, I noticed that one of the preset stations specialized in bluegrass. "Did you set this to bluegrass?" I asked with obvious astonishment. Dr. Theresa's response, which was not exactly an answer, was something like, "What's wrong with bluegrass?" The answer is nothing. There is nothing wrong with bluegrass. But when I put it on the bluegrass channel, Dr. Theresa made me change it again because bluegrass, according to her, "sounds like they did a bunch of coke." An exact quotation! 2. My dad goes to a particular Waffle House every Saturday morning with a collection of his cronies. Dad said that someone who lives next door to this Waffle House keeps chickens, and the chickens wander over and hang out in the parking lot. People feed them. It's all part of the experience. I was of course reminded of the Original Frosty Mug, and the chickens that used to peck around your feet while you tried to drink a milkshake. I wondered glumly and aloud whether the Original Frosty Mug could possibly still be open for business seeing as how the interstate has been improved - quite a few years ago now - to bypass the town. Dad said there was a new chicken at the Waffle House. I asked him how he knew it was new. He said it had "different feathers and a different attitude." He described it as a "quick-acting, small chicken who didn't know the procedure." Quote! 3. While visiting down there on the Gulf Coast, I received an email from McNeil, indicating that he had received his copy of the Apocryphal Gospels. He waited so long for it that I was sure he would be disappointed, but such did not appear to be the case, as McNeil remarked gleefully that Young Jesus should have been sent to military school. I do not consider this blasphemy, given the apocryphal nature of the text. 4. As we began our departure from the Gulf Coast by way of the Dauphin Island Bridge, I was given to remark, "Pelicans are cool. You know, they got their big old mouths." QUOTE! I thought I could put that line in an upcoming unpublished novel. Speaking of my unpublished novels, I'll have something else to say about them below. 5. I accidentally left my hat at my parents' house! It was a nice hat I bought at a shop in Pasadena recommended by Adam Muto. I wore it to the racetrack with Pen! If I ever want my hat back, I guess I'll have to visit my parents again. 6. While down there, I received texts from Megan on the evening she attended Wallace Shawn's new play. She has a good story about all that, but I shan't share it here as it is hers alone. But I will tell you this! When I got home, I was reading the New York Times... and look, I skipped the New York Times a couple of days while traveling. Was it a relief? I think it was! But now I'm back to reading the New York Times and I see a review of Wallace Shawn's new play. And here, I'll quote a little bit from the review, which observes of one character, "given his ontological understanding of the Big Bang, all action is preordained." So! I have a character in one of my unpublished novels who thinks the same thing! And I was like, oh no, people will think I am trying to rip off Wallace Shawn in the unlikely event my unpublished novel is ever published! So I sent Megan an excerpt of my novel, to get her opinion about whether or not people in this highly improbable future I have imagined will think I'm trying to rip off Wallace Shawn. Here, I'll share a small portion of the chapter I sent Megan: "Everything was made of molecules! Every single thing that ever happened was because of a couple of molecules banging into one another, causing the creation of the universe itself, in Gram Rattan’s understanding. Everything that happened after that was just more and more molecules banging around. Even the thoughts in Gram Rattan’s head! ... Molecules obeying immutable laws! That first molecule hitting that second molecule, well, that was the only thing that had ever really 'happened' in Gram Rattan’s opinion. The rest was gravy." So anyway, Megan told me that in the Wallace Shawn play, the moment must have passed so subtly she barely noticed it. I paraphrase. Anyhow, we can all breathe a sigh of relief! 7. You know who plays the "Big Bang Guy," as I call him, in Wallace Shawn's play? John Early! He was in an episode of SUMMER CAMP ISLAND I worked on! And Wallace Shawn was on ADVENTURE TIME! I'm not 100% sure, but I think maybe he was on SUMMER CAMP ISLAND as well. Anyway, based on a profile I read of him in the New York Times, he would love it if you went up and shouted that fact in his face, especially if he happened to be standing in a "temple of art." According to the New York Times, if there is one thing Wallace Shawn can't get enough of, it is standing around in a "temple of art." 8. You know I don't care to lug a big fat book with me when I travel. So I left Witold Gombrowicz at home. Upon my return, I opened it up and the first thing I read was "God, allow me to vomit up the human body!" Ha ha. You had to be there. That's old Gomby for you. Funny, I was already thinking of him as "old Gomby" when Megan texted, referring to him as "Gommy." I bet he would love it! As much as Wallace Shawn would love to be told by strangers on the street that when he was on ADVENTURE TIME, his character farted.

You Go Uruguay

The title of this "post" alludes to a Groucho Marx joke which I will not explain or contextualize because I know you don't care. And you know what? It hurts. Another thing you don't care about is a certain kind of coincidence I like. "Like" is a strong word. Anyway, I'm going to tell you about it. So, I was reading in this Witold Gombrowicz book about his reaction to the works of Simone Weil, and I was thinking, I don't know anything about Simone Weil. And then I watched a Godard movie the same day and a character repeatedly brought up Simone Weil! When I emailed Megan with this exciting news, I put an extra L in Weil... that's just how little I know about Simone Weil, which is just a bonus detail especially for you not to care about. Later that day, or maybe it was the next day, my brother told me that he had purchased one of my books from a used book store, and he texted me a photo of the inscription, in which I had praised the previous owner of the book to the high heavens. You wouldn't believe how lovingly I inscribed this book. My brother was incensed that the guy had ditched it. Though the the book was inscribed to him using his first name alone, I am almost 100% sure I know who the guy is, though I was surprised by how seemingly devoted I was to him at one time, or maybe I just tend to gush. I wondered to myself with my simple childlike brain, gee, where is that guy now? Whatever happened to him? So I looked him up, and he moved to Uruguay some years ago. I wasn't mad to begin with, but if I had been, how could I have stayed that way? I wouldn't pack up any books by me if I were moving to Uruguay! Okay. We're not to the end of this story yet! So then I picked up Gombrowicz again and he's taking a little trip on a boat, during which (from the translation by Lillian Vallee) "we practically reach the green shores of Uruguay." Now, I bet you think those are all the things you're not going to care about. But there's more! Here's where the ouroboros comes in. So! As you may not care about recalling, the diary of Witold Gombrowicz is an official Million Dollar Book Club selection. All right! Here's the thing... the guy who unceremoniously (I assume... or maybe there was a ceremony!) dumped my lushly inscribed book before moving to Uruguay is the editor of one of our future Million Dollar Book Club selections! (We have a list.) Or I should say he was the editor of one of our former future Million Dollar Book Club selections, for I immediately made a motion, which was seconded and passed (as there are just two of us) for him to be crossed off all of our lists until the end of time. I wasn't mad, but it was what Witold Gombrowicz would have done. Half his diary consists of taking stuff like that personally!

Advances in Boiling

Well, I'm reading another book with an owl in it but let's talk about something else first. I'm unemployed, so I can make this "post" as long as I want. So, McNeil emailed me a photograph of a physical newspaper-like object he was reading, and he said the byline belonged to Anya Groner. He wondered whether this could be the same Anya Groner I used to teach. I strained my eyes but could not discern individual letters of the font displayed in such a miniscule fashion by McNeil's photograph. Still, I could tell the article was about bears. And in my heart, I knew that Anya would love writing about bears. So I said "Yes!" before I even asked her. So then I asked her. And... "Yes!" Yes, Anya wrote the article about a bear attack (content warning: bear attack!) and sent me this "link" ("click" here) that even my old eyes could read. Check it out! Another thing McNeil and I emailed about was how I dreamed about him betting on horses and wearing a tuxedo and doing a duet with Paul Simon, in which they played saxophones as well as playing guitars and singing. McNeil contended that I was really dreaming about myself, because I used to play the saxophone and I have bet on horses... once! But I was ashamed for McNeil to think that I only used his face in order to dream about myself... though I've heard it said (haven't I?) that everyone in your dreams is really you. So! I did not mention this to McNeil at the time, but in the dream I was sitting around near a guitar and Paul Simon walked up and asked whether I played, and I was like, "No, this is my friend McNeil's guitar. He'll be back in a minute." In the dream, then, I did make a distinction between myself and McNeil, who really does play the guitar. All right! I'm reading and very much enjoying THE ELEMENTALS by Michael McDowell, whom I am happy to claim as a fellow native of Alabama. And allow me to quote: "Big Barbara complained it was hotter than a boiled owl." Now, in our previous literary encounters with owls of the boiled variety, we have observed them to be drunk (as in "stewed") most often, but also tough or sore. I do believe this is the first time we have heard of a boiled owl being "hot," but I guess a boiled owl would be hot indeed, especially right out of the pot. I should mention that the illustration for Anya's bear article is by Blair Hobbs, who also made the iconic cheese ball that illustrates my recent "blog"trospective about my work on ADVENTURE TIME.

I'm Like Ladyhawke

Above, that's Adam Muto's tribute to my beloved characters Frowny 'n' Smiley! But more of that anon. First! I know you are so interested in how I switch from my daytime book to my nighttime book. My process, if you will. How do I stop reading one book during the day and start reading another book at night? Well, it's just like in the movie LADYHAWKE! Except instead of turning into a wolf as Rutger Hauer does with the setting of the sun, I put aside my daytime book and pick up my nighttime book! It's just that simple, folks. And before we go on, I'd like to mention that I repeatedly brought up LADYHAWKE in the Adventure Time writers room, and yet, somehow, we never stole anything from LADYHAWKE to use in the show, no matter how much I begged and cried. All right! But that's not the point. There isn't a point. But I'm sure you remember how sometimes my daytime book will blur into my nighttime book... like the daytime book will mention Gogol and then the nighttime book will mention Gogol, and so on (please "click" for a full catalog)... anyway! Yesterday, as my daytime reading was coming to a close, I read (in THE LOST STEPS by Alejo Carpentier, translated by Adrian Nathan West) "... the grave-faced toucan flaunts his breastplate..." at which point I opened up my nighttime book (a scholarly analysis of the roots of oral epic poetry) to see, of all things, "Rade's sword strikes fire from the captain's breastplate." Now, what does this mean? Nothing. I guess breastplate is an everyday word. Personally, I don't think about breastplates too much. But what is the universe telling me? To buy a breastplate? I don't know why I am reminded of a recent incident... yes I do. Anyway, I was at Square Books and I saw a new volume of previously unpublished Dream Songs by John Berryman. And I was like, well, he's been dead a long time. I asked Richard, who was standing there, whether they were any good or just some garbage someone swept up from John Berryman's floor and Richard said, and I do think this is an exact quotation, "Let's do the test!" And he opened the book at random and stuck his finger in and read the lines he found that way and they were good and so I bought the book. That's how Richard gets you! And this is related too, as I am sure you will agree: tonight, if you watch the special THE ELEPHANT on Adult Swim, you will see, in the commercial breaks on your ordinary television set, some extremely short "Frowny 'n' Smiley" episodes by me. So... when we were in one meeting during the making of THE ELEPHANT, Pen happened to mention that it was the 100th anniversary of the exquisite corpse, an art-making game which inspired the structrue of THE ELEPHANT. So, anyway! Today, in the New York Times, there is an article about the 100th anniversary of surrealism, and it includes the origin story of the exquisite corpse! Isn't that something? Today of all days? And I just thought of another thing: Matthew Broderick appears in both LADYHAWKE and ADVENTURE TIME: FIONNA AND CAKE! Okay, I am going to buy a breastplate.

A Word of Diminutive Form

Y'all are going to go crazy from excitement when I tell you about this! So, remember the other day when I was remembering reading "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came" at the University of South Alabama? I don't suppose any of us, if we existed, will ever forget the time I remembered that. So I started thinking to myself, "Jack," I started thinking, "wasn't 'Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came' some kind of creepy-ass junk and doesn't that mean it probably has an owl in it, which is something you supposedly love, Jack, you wily old bastard?" (I just shocked myself with my own profanity, but I see I have "blogged" the latter word twice before - "click" here and here for context. I know you won't, you bastard!) So I found my giant volume of Robert Browning and started reading "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came." And I read stanza after stanza, and I got to the part where it became clear... well, he's like, "a burr had been a treasure-trove." In other words, it's a bleak landscape! There's nothing there for an owl to perch on! So I was getting discouraged, all right. Then Dr. Theresa, who was preparing dinner, asked me to help out by seasoning the fish. Which I did gladly! And let me tell you: I know you're worried, but I left the book open flat on my TV tray, and it didn't snap shut and make me lose my place, and I'll tell you why: it has a broad, sturdy spine! Just the kind of book spine I go nuts for! So after I season the fish, I sit back down with the book and I'm not feeling too optimistic about any owls, you know, but here's old Childe Roland and he's getting pretty freaked out by this weirdo landscape, and he asks himself, "Will the night send a howlet or a bat?" And with my keen mind hard at work, I was like "A howlet? That's got to be an owlet!" And damned if I wasn't right for once in my sorry life. I looked at the etymology in the OED and here's where it gets super exciting!!! Remember how I like to beat myself up over the time in my second book when I tried to give a character a comical French accent like some kind of jerk? And I was like, "Why did I ever think a French person would say 'owl' like 'howl'?" Well, well, well. The OED says that howlet is "Apparently a borrowing from French... hulotte, in 16th century hulote, a word of diminutive form." So who's the jerk now? Is it still me?

Green Means Go

Hey! You know how THE ELEPHANT, a special I worked on with Kent Osborne, Rebecca Sugar, Ian Jones-Quartey, Patrick McHale, Pendleton Ward, and many others, will premiere on Adult Swim December 19? Pretty soon! And how the next day, on HBO Max, assuming it still exists, there will be a "Behind the Elephant" special ABOUT the special? A special about a special. What will they think of next? But guess what? Whatever you guessed, you were wrong. Because if you watch THE ELEPHANT on December 19 on an old-timey TV set like an ancient caveman, you'll see Frowny 'n' Smiley! Yes, stop pinching yourselves, THAT Frowny 'n' Smiley, famous for being a thing no one remembers from back when I was on twitter. Only now they're in TV form! Like when Milhouse said ALF was in pog form. I got the green light to spread the word. I call it a show, but I'm lying. Frowny 'n' Smiley episodes are 15 seconds long. So I don't think you can comfortably call that a show. But it's something! And you're going to love it. LOVE IT! Let Frowny 'n' Smiley worm their way into your shriveled up hearts, you monsters! Learn to feel again!

My Interesting Life

I was watching the Robert Altman adaptation - much maligned! - of the Sam Shepard play FOOL FOR LOVE. Noticing some purely cinematic gestures, I couldn't help but wonder whether there were analogous effects in the stage version... this is just one example of the interesting ideas that enter my large head as I sit around doing nothing for days on end. So I dug out a copy of the play and, examining the scene in question, came upon the line "And these white owls kept swooping down out of nowhere, hunting for jackrabbits." Needless to say, I had perked up when hearing that line in the movie, and the way it was situated in the scene that had captured my curiosity was just a bonus, considering my sick compulsion to catalog literary works with owls in them. Speaking of which! I grabbed out of the big pile of books on the floor of my home office a history of magical beliefs and practices - I don't know why. It's just what I grabbed to read. Look, I've got a lot of problems, okay? And I was reading along about this and that, including ancient Mesopotamian civilization, where you might run into a guy on the street called an "owlman"... a shadowy figure, the author calls him! "It is not always clear what these people did... The snake-charmer and the owlman were regularly accused of witchcraft," writes the (rather credulous, by the way!) author. Thank you for joining me in my pursuit of whatever it is.

Not Cool, Medea!

I was giving 3 to 2 odds that there would be an owl in this book of Seneca's plays. You should've taken me up on it! So Medea is whipping up a poisonous stew and she adds, in the words of Emily Wilson's translation, "the heart of a melancholy eagle-owl." Then she does something with a screech owl I can't even tell you about. It's just too awful. That's no way to act! This reminded me of something, which turned out to be John Aubrey's paraphrase of Ovid, in which Medea tosses "the screech owl's flesh and its ill-boding wings" into her bubbling (one assumes) pot. And THAT made me want to look up the passage in my own edition of Ovid, translated by Rolfe Humphries, who gives us "a hoot-owl's wings and flesh." Then he adds "a werewolf's entrails," so that's really something. But that's not the point! As much as we all love the entrails of werewolves, the point, as any longtime "blog" reader - there are none - will know, is that hooting and screeching are two different things. So which is it? Are we to believe John Aubrey or Rolfe Humphries? I'd have to learn Latin to find out. And, as established here previously, by implication, that's not going to happen. Even though Dr. Theresa took four semesters of it as an undergraduate! None of it rubbed off. Well, I had my chance to learn things when I was young. But I was too busy watching GRAPE APE.

Form, Craft, and Influence

Hey! Remember when I was reading a translation of THE ODYSSEY by Emily Wilson? Well, I liked it so much that I thought I'd see what else she had done. And she had written a biography of Seneca! So I'm reading it. All right. You have remembered one thing. Now I need you to remember another thing. Ready? Okay! So, remember when, for some reason, I was "teaching" some graduate students in a course called "Form, Craft, and Influence," ha ha!? (Ha ha was not part of the title of the class.) Naturally, we were reading the Nick Tosches biography of Dean Martin. (Dean was the influence, not Nick Tosches, God love him anyway. But I think Nick Tosches is a bad influence unless you are actually Nick Tosches. I could say the same for Cormac McCarthy now that I am beginning to recall some of the gore-drenched prolixity I was forced to run through my eyeballs when I "taught" a couple of his excitable young imitators.) But remember how one of the students said, regarding Dean Martin, something like, "Why are we reading about this guy? He's just a jerk!" And remember how I just sat there with a dopey look on my face because... I mean... who entrusted me with a classroom, anyway? (I think it was Barry Hannah!) Well, I was thinking about that guy (the student, not Barry) as I read Emily Wilson's biography of Seneca. I was like, gee, I wonder what that guy would think about Seneca! Because Seneca has done a couple of things so far that would make Dean Martin blush. Like helping an emperor murder his mother. Yes, I think that would make Dean Martin blush.

Utter Chaos

Few of us will ever forget where we were when I saw Dianne Wiest perform in the Samuel Beckett play HAPPY DAYS. But did you know that I was tempted to stand up at the end and shout “I loved you in COOKIE!”? As I recall, I was wearing my pink jacket, which, at the time, I thought might catch Dianne Wiest’s eye as I yelled incoherently about COOKIE during the standing ovation with spittle flying out of my mouth. Please be assured that in the end, I simply clapped like a normal person and kept my fat mouth shut. I’m just listing these details to avoid the inevitable... the inevitable being something about owls. Look. We all remember The Great Owl Drought of 2023, which lasted over three months. But other times, owls just come at a person too fast. There are too many owls! And yes, I get tired of telling you about every time I read a book with an owl in it, a habit that I began for reasons long forgotten or, more accurately, repressed. Before we go on (see how I’m still putting it off?) I should explain that the illustration for this “post,” of Peter Falk and Jerry Lewis walking on the beach, was taken from my TV in 2016, if I am supposed to trust the date stamped there by my computer. And indeed I can say with certainty that it was after April of that year, at which time our former TV blew up, because this is obviously a normal widescreen TV like everyone has now, whereas our old TV that blew up was one of those square boxes so heavy that even Ace Atkins had trouble lifting it when he came over to carry it out of our house, due to our begging and pleading. But the date stamped on this photo without my knowledge or consent... why does the government want to know the last time I watched COOKIE (2016 was not the last time I watched COOKIE)? And why am I talking about COOKIE? Because the Million Dollar Book Club is reading the memoir of Susan Seidelman, who directed that movie, along with DESPERATELY SEEKING SUSAN and at least two other really good ones of which I am too tired to type the titles. Anyhow! When Susan Seidelman is a kid, she and her siblings huddle up and watch late, late monster movies on TV, because they are “night owls.” As you will recall, the last night owls we mentioned were from Shakespeare, and he meant owls that literally fly around at night, which is... most owls? Right? You know what? Despite your many assumptions, I am not an owl expert. But Susan Seidelman is referring to the famous metaphorical night owls, people who thrive in the wee hours. The latter, I would say, is the most common kind of owl to run across in the Million Dollar Book Club. Previous examples of this kind of night owl (hardly a comprehensive list!) include Andy Warhol, Anna Magnini, and Yoko Ono. As I bring this interesting whatever it is to a close, I will say, look! If somebody else tells me a book has an owl in it, I usually don’t include it here. If I included every owl book that people told me about secondhand, featuring owls I didn’t witness in context with my own elderly mist-filled peepers, it would be utter chaos. Utter chaos! One time this guy Brian told me about the owl in a John Le Carré novel and it was a good (if upsetting) one, so I put it on the list. But don’t let that give you any ideas! However! McNeil read a book horribly called THE RAT ON FIRE, in which someone is as “drunk as a hoot owl,” which, fine. I’ve often wondered about where the phrase or concept comes from. I’ve seen it used in a work dating back to 1177! Which is quite a while ago. I don't think I was even born yet! But no one has ever explained to me why owls are supposed to be drunk (despite at least one owl who drank schnapps in real life). So I mentioned my puzzlement to McNeil, who immediately zapped me with an answer that struck me as satisfying. As you will recall, McNeil also explained to me why the wind blows in 2008. (I feel sure he once laid out the purpose of lightning for me as well, though I can find no textual evidence of when that happened. I do believe I wrote about it in my precious diary like the sweet little thing I am. I even recall that my mom found some tragic aesthetic or philosophical fault with McNeil's electrical reasoning. Sorry, McNeil!) Anyway, here’s what old McNeil had to say, and I quote: “Maybe because owls kind of bob their heads, and when they move on a branch they do it kind of awkwardly - one step to the right, then the other leg (or claw?) follows so it looks like their whole body is bobbing up and down. This is how they move in my imagination when I am asked by the authorities to describe the movements of owls.” PS! Embarrassingly, as I compulsively looked back over the "blog" for pointless "hyperlinks" that no one will ever "click" to add to this "post," I found one in which I had already been gently guided to a similar conclusion about drunken owls... over ten years ago! Like a jerk! Similar but not identical, I hasten to stipulate! McNeil's version holds more water... or booze! Ha ha! We're having fun now! We're finally having some fun, aren't we?

Suffolk's Head

Just because I keep a big long list... look... I've told you this a million times! But just because I keep a big long list of books with owls in them doesn't mean I have to tell you EVERY time an owl appears in a single book. I am obliged to mention only one owl incident per volume. But! I could not help but notice in HENRY VI, PART 2, or 2 HENRY VI, as Oral Sumner Coad calls it, that screech owls make a second appearance. Not regular non-screeching owls, but screech owls... twice! As if one set of screech owls wasn't enough. Allow me to paraphrase or summarize Shakespeare. I'll make it hip for the kids of today! So Queen Margaret is like, okay, Suffolk, if you're so dang mad why don't you start cursing everybody? And Suffolk is like oh yeah? Wait until you see how great I am at cursing people! Then he wishes that the sweetest thing anybody ever gets to eat is bitter gall and, I don't know, that lizards will bite their asses? The book is downstairs by the bed. Hence the paraphrasing. And he hopes the only music they hear will come from snakes and screech owls. That kind of stuff. Finally, Queen Margaret is like, okay, we get it, put a sock in it! But she loves him. I hope you don't mind some spoilers. Anyway, it doesn't go well for him because one of the subsequent stage directions is (and I think this may be a quotation, not a paraphrase, or darn close to it) "Enter Queen Margaret, carrying Suffolk's head." Speaking of books with owls in them, McNeil wrote with the unhelpful suggestion that I begin a second list... one of books I've read WITHOUT owls in them. See, he was reading THE BRASS CUPCAKE by John D. MacDonald, and he checked the list, curious to know whether he might expect an owl, but found himself at a loss. Was it not on there because it didn't have an owl in it? Or did it have an owl in it but I just haven't read it? Or... did it not have an... you get it. My mind is wandering. Most importantly, McNeil reports that THE BRASS CUPCAKE confirms our observation that John D. MacDonald is afraid of women, especially their mouths. Wait! I mean his PROTAGONISTS are afraid of women and their mouths. I'm sure it's just a coincidence that all his protagonists are deathly afraid of women's mouths, just a crazy coincidence, having nothing to do with the unspeakable fears of John D. MacDonald himself. Anyway, and this is gross, so brace yourself, according to McNeil, the protagonist of THE BRASS CUPCAKE kisses a woman and her mouth is "like a soft open wound." Okay!

Awful Stuff

Content warning! This "post" will have some gory junk in it, mostly compliments of Mr. William Shakespeare, with some help from Tom Wolfe. Okay! First of all, I am finally reading that paperback of HENRY VI, Part 1 I got at Square Books. All right! Pin a medal on me. Oh! Before you pin a medal on me, I was casually glancing through the "blog" for previous Henry VI tidbits, and I found one that says his favorite activity was sleeping. I get it! I really do. But I want to talk about this guy Talbot. A pal of his gets mortally wounded and Talbot asks him, "One of thy eyes and thy cheek's side struck off?" Which is a funny thing to ask a person in that position. Like, what's the guy supposed to say, am I right? Come on! Get it together, Talbot! You know, it's the same thing that happens to Chuck Yeager at the end of THE RIGHT STUFF, both the movie and the book. I mean to say that his face catches on fire after he ejects from his plummeting aircraft. Don't worry, folks, unlike Talbot's friend Salisbury, he's fine! But a detail they leave out of the movie is that after he hits the ground, the kid who finds him vomits all over the place because old Chuck's not looking so good. I wonder why they left that out of the movie! Getting back to Talbot, he's real upset, you see, about how dirty they've done his pal. He's mad in particular at Joan of Arc and her buddy the Dauphin, and he vows to get 'em! Get 'em good! "Your hearts I'll stamp out with my horse's heels and make a quagmire of your mingled brains." Holy cow! Mingled brains! He's going to mingle their brains all up! What! It's going to be brain soup when he gets through with them! Just horrible, as promised. Well, the guy is upset, like I was telling you. Later, though, a French lady calls Talbot a "weak and writhled shrimp." Ha ha! Writhled! Ouch! Ooh la la! Zut alors! Anyway, okay, Shakespeare, you've got me hooked! What's up next with this crazy crew of lovable lunkheads?

Sure Do Know My Stuff

I really know my stuff. What's my "stuff," you may ask? First of all, go to hell. All right! Well, remember how I said this Megan Abbott novel has a night bird in it, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's an owl? And then I went on to suggest that an owl might be forthcoming? Remember all that? Do you? Okay! So, here's a quotation for you: "'I bet it was an owl,' Becky said." BOOM! So, to answer your impertinent question, my "stuff," as you call it, is knowing when an owl will be in a book. It's all I've got, okay? To quote beloved ADVENTURE TIME character Root Beer Guy, "It's all I've got!" And then, as you might recall, his wife, Cherry Cream Soda, dressed as a French maid for marital reasons, ran weeping from the room. We weren't messing around on that show!

What Was Jacked Up

Not much funny stuff happening in our interesting modern times they're handing out these days, but here's the funniest phrase I read in today's New York Times: "this symphony was jacked up by the addition of a second tuba." I'll be perfectly frank with you people. I've taken that phrase out of context for extra delightful humor purposes. "Jacked up" actually modifies "magnificent brass section" from earlier in the incompletely quoted sentence, and does not refer to the symphonic composition itself. But I can't help it, I thought it was funny when my poor old eyes fell upon "this symphony was jacked up by the addition of a second tuba." They sure do get excited by some funny things over there at the old New York Times. And then they make it cool for the tuba-loving kids of today. Anyway, this is how I have a good time now, leave me alone, I hate you! Waaaaah!

Memory Tricks

So, a little while ago, I was at Square Books and they had different books by Susan Minot stacked everywhere. I asked Richard, who owns the joint, what gives! Richard says to me, he says, Susan Minot is coming to town. Now, I did a little research, which I'm generally against, and this must have happened way back in October, though my guess would have been sooner, like March. Bear in mind for the remainder of the "post" how bad my memory is. Anyway, I picked up a book of Minot's called MONKEYS, a title I have always liked. There used to be a lot more monkey content on the "blog." What happened? When did monkeys lose their magic? Answer: they didn't. Maybe it was you! What was I saying? Oh! So I had been meaning to read a Susan Minot book for about 40 years. The way I remembered it... and I texted Tom Franklin to make sure... to make sure he was there, first of all. I was wondering if his presence in my memory was hallucinatory, as I recalled him playing an advisory role much like Elvis does in the film TRUE ROMANCE. Anyway! It was some time in the 1980s, and Tom Franklin and I were looking at Susan Minot's author photo in a magazine. Newspaper? Magazine. And we - aspiring writers at the time, to put it mildly - got in our heads that her book looked interesting and she looked nice and we could very probably be best friends with her if we drove several hours to wherever the article said she was reading. Jackson? New Orleans? I'm going to guess Jackson, Mississippi, because New Orleans would have been too easy, as I picture us standing in downtown Mobile at the time. Jackson would have been more of a quest. Jackson, Mississippi! The mere name sparks the imagination. No it doesn't. The end of the story is that we didn't go. And forty years later, here I am, finally reading a Susan Minot book. And I'm only on page 60, and there have already been, I would say, 10-14 owls in it. That sounds like a lot, doesn't it? It sure sounds like Susan Minot must have beaten the previous owl record, a tie between Virginia Woolf and Willa Cather. But not so fast! Hold it right there, chum! So, there is an "owl room" in this book. And some kids go in there and play an owl game of their own creation, which counts as one owl. A couple of pages later, there is a cake of brown soap shaped as an owl. That's two. Here's where it gets complicated! Are you getting excited? So, in this "owl room" are various kinds of owls. Some are described as being singular: "a hollow brass owl," for example. Other owls are multiple: "two china owls with flowers" or... and here's where you have to pay attention... "owl engravings." But how many owl engravings? And how many owls are represented in each owl engraving? Nobody knows! Possibly, not even Susan Minot herself knows! In any case, the owl room contains, at a bare mininum, eight owls. Oh boy, this is just the kind of "post" I love! However! By my usual method of counting "how many owls there are in a book," I would say there are 1. The owl figures in the owl room. 2. The owl game. 3. The soap shaped like an owl. That brings Susan Minot in at three owls! Virginia Woolf and Willa Cather remain undefeated! Wow, I'm just thinking of all the controversy this "post" is going to generate among people who enjoy counting owls as much as I do!